Notice was sent to Isabel to prepare, and she made cordial reply that the two rooms on the ground-floor were being made ready for Mr. Dynevor, and Clara’s own little room being set in order; Miss Mercy Faithfull helping with all her might, and little Kitty stamping about, thinking her services equally effectual.

Oliver was in haste to leave a place replete with disappointment and failure, and was so helpless and dependent as to wish for his nephew’s assistance on the journey; and it was, therefore, fixed for the end of James’s second week.  No one called to take leave, except the Curate and good Mr. Henderson, who showed Clara much warm, kind feeling, and praised her to her brother.

She begged James to walk with her for a farewell visit to her grandmother’s other old friend.  Great was her enjoyment of this expedition; she said she had not had a walk worth having since she was at Aix-la-Chapelle, and liberty and companionship compensated for all the heat and dust in the dreary tract, full of uncomfortable shabby-genteel abodes, and an unpromising population.

‘One cannot regret such a tenantry,’ said Clara.

‘Poor creatures!’ said James.  ’I wonder into whose hands they will fall.  Your heart may be free, Clara; you have followed the clear path of duty; but it is a painful thought for me, that to strive to amend these festering evils, caused very likely by my grandfather’s speculations, might have been my appointed task.  I should not have had far to seek for occupation.  When I was talking to the Curate yesterday, my heart smote me to think what I might have done to help him.’

‘It would all have been over now.’

’It ought not.  Nay, perhaps, my presence might have left my uncle free to attend to his own concerns.’

‘I really believe you are going to regret the place!’

’After all, Clara, I was a Dynevor before my uncle came home.  It might have been my birthright.  But, as Isabel says, what we are now is far more likely to be safe for the children.  I was bad enough as I was, but what should I have been as a pampered heir!  Let it go.’

‘Yes, let it go,’ said Clara; ’it has been little but pain to me.  We shall teach my poor uncle that home love is better than old family estates.  I almost wish he may recover nothing in Peru, that he may learn that you receive him for his own sake.’

‘That is more than I can wish,’ said James.  ’A hundred or two a-year would come in handily.  Besides, I am afraid that Mary Ponsonby may be suffering in this crash.’

‘She seems to have taken care of herself,’ said Clara.  ’She does not write to me, and I am almost ready to believe her father at last.  I could not have thought it of her!’

’Isabel has always said it was the best thing that could happen to Louis.’

’Isabel never had any notion of Louis.  I don’t mean any offence, but if she had known what he was made of, she would never have had you.’